Thanks to the hard work of John Massey, Mariama Moussa, and your Nomad Foundation crew, Global Health Media has posted four new videos in Tamasheq on their website. Films are a great educational tool for everyone but especially for non-literate learners. We have used them on every mission since 2016 but have been hindered by […]
Our Toyota’s demise
Since 2011 our faithful Toyota pickup has been running around nomad lands delivering meds, trainees, supplies and anything we need to conduct our projects. On Christmas eve, it spontaneously caught fire while on a mission and burned completely. The insurance available in Niger does not cover fire. Needless to say our projects cannot be completed […]
My first trip to Niger by Dr. Jennifer Stevens
Since I was a teenager I dreamed of working in Africa. In 2019 I had an opportunity to speak at a conference in Namibia, but I still longed to do more. When my friends Pat and Becky invited me to work with Nomad Foundation, I was very excited. I have been doing global work in […]
How are we doing? by Dr. Jones and Dr. Stevens
Dr. Rebecca Jones preface: It has been ten years since a wave of maternal mortalities among families associated with the Nomad Foundation inspired the initiation of our traditional birth attendant training program. The goal all along has been to provide basic education and supplies that could reduce the number of young women losing their lives […]
Pat Manzon’s take on Niger mission 2022
This was a special year for all of us heading to Niger for the first time in 3 years. The pandemic managed to keep us at home all that time. In the end, there continued to be training progress despite our absence. We were excited to see what that progress looked like so we could […]
What We’ve Got Here is Success in Communication–by Dr. Becky Jones
Education relies on communication. When working with non-literate people whose native language differs from the teacher’s, quality communication is challenging. In our matrone training project, we have two groups of trainees who speak two entirely different languages – Wodaabe who speak Fulfulde and Tuareg who speak Tamasheq. In school, Nigerien children learn French from a […]
On to Iferouane 2022
Iferouane is almost a two day drive so we spent the night at Moussa’s camp. In the morning the nomads take their animals out to pasture–here are the goats. The training was held at city hall in Iferouane. Here the vice mayor and the doctor at the maternity in Iferouane and the Nomad Foundation team […]
Friendships
One of the most important reasons for gathering all our trainees together is for them to form friendships and share their experiences. It is a wonderful way to learn and was gratifying to see the old friendships renewed and new ones forming. Mariama and Azarra are both Wodaabe women who live very far apart. They […]
Back to work–Tamesna training 2022
Seeing our team in Niger was pretty wonderful after three long years. Rabi, who we are putting through midwife school, takes time off from that to continue running our programs at Tamesna. Our plan was to have our local staff do the training under the supervision of Dr. Becky, Pat and Jennifer. So the first […]
